Bessel Kok on the World Championship crisis

10/1/2006 – The Dutch businessman ran for the FIDE presidency against Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in June this year. The latter won, but he has now proposed that the world chess federation adopt large parts of Kok's agenda and make him the head of a professional organisation to run top-level events. We asked Bessel Kok for his opinion on the current situation.

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We spoke to Bessel Kok, who is also one of the main initiators of the
Prague
Agreement for the reunification of chess, by phone in his home in Prague.
FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has offered Bessel, who ran against him in
the last presidential election, the Chairmanship of a professional chess company
that would run top-class events. The final decision will be taken later this
year.

Bessel Kok (standing) at the Prague summit in May 2002, with Vladimir Kramnik,
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov

Bessel Kok on the World Championship crisis

The Appeals Committee blundered in accepting a complaint which was nothing
more than declaring a suspicion of possible fraud. This was simply wrong. The
Committee should have rejected this complaint immediately, stating that no
proof whatsoever had been supplied. Instead of this, they accepted the complaint
of Topalov’s manager Silvio Danailov, they disclosed private video images
from Kramnik’s rest room, and they changed the match conditions which
had been agreed in advance by both Grandmasters and their delegations.

Dutch business tycoon Bessel Kok, who may soon run the professional arm
of FIDE

The arbiter subsequently started a game which should have never been played
in the first place, because the playing conditions had been unilaterally modified.
This was a second mistake, although Geurt Gijssen will probably defend his
decision by stating that he based this on the verdict of the Appeals Committee.

So my conclusions are simple:

The Appeals Committee made a wrong judgment and its decision to modify
the playing conditions must be declared null and void.

Game five was started under playing conditions that were not mutually
agreed by both players (and in fact explicitly rejected by one of them),
so the game should be considered null and void.

Game five should start tomorrow, Monday, October 2nd, and the match should
continue under the same playing conditions as agreed before.

The Appeals Committee should be dismissed and replaced by a Committee
agreed by both players.

In the absence of an agreed Committee, the FIDE President is responsible
for the duties of the Committee.

Proceed as quickly as possible with the outsourcing of all top-level chess
competitions to a separate company manage by professional organisers.

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12/6/2017 – Imagine this: you tell a computer system how the pieces move — nothing more. Then you tell it to learn to play the game. And a day later — yes, just 24 hours — it has figured it out to the level that beats the strongest programs in the world convincingly! DeepMind, the company that recently created the strongest Go program in the world, turned its attention to chess, and came up with this spectacular result.

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On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!

Enjoy the best moments of recent top tournaments (World Cup, Isle of Man Open) with analysis of top players. In addition you'll get lots of training material. For example 10 new suggestions for your opening repertoire.